Cecilia was so worn out that she had actually considered riding side saddle. She might have done it, too, had they not been flying so high.
Irien flew on point, leading the way for her two best friends despite having never been to the waystation in the far northern mountains of the Barrens before. She'd seen it on enough maps at the Steamwheedle shipping office that she knew exactly where to fly – at least, that's what she said.
Even through her flying goggles, the afternoon sun interfered with visibility. Cecilia squinted her eyes; even though Irien was a competent flier and an excellent navigator, the more commanding part of Cecilia's personality always pushed her to be the one to lead. In a way, this last flight of the trip gave her time to realize that it was time to let go.
In all truth, Cecilia didn't intend on retiring from work entirely as she had initially claimed back in Astranaar. For sure, she would certainly not miss her job at the shipping office. Allison was an awful boss with poor communication skills and a contemptuous nature, and the fact that it was Cecilia's comfiest job didn't make it any easier. Being fired was still a good thing; she just didn't intend on retiring totally. Not that finding work would be difficult, anyway; Cecilia had ten millennia of experience as a cavalrywoman, and her reputation as both a warrior trainer and a riding trainer had spread outside of Ratchet itself. Travelers and adventurers would always be looking to hone their skills, select new talents and increase their levels (which had been standardized by a rare international accord long ago). No, she would still work – part time only.
But it was the nature of the work that signified the biggest change in Cecilia's life. She wasn't an adventurer anymore; she'd now be training other adventurers, watching all the young people pick up where she left off.
Theoretically, she would have gotten over that the moment she and Khujand set foot in Ratchet; they had left Draenor to their completed duplex with Irien under the express promise between all three of them that they would be leaving the life of adventuring. Sure, they might take up the odd quest here or there – the locals had assumed she and Irien were sisters (they were in all but name) and would often come running to the 'colorful family' on the north side for help. All of that, however, was by their own choosing, and they no longer relied on questing for income.
Somehow, it hadn't sunk into Cecilia's mind. There was no huge revelation or epiphany, which now seemed to be some sort of running gag in her life. Rather, it was hitting her right there, more than a hundred yards up above the mountains of the far northwestern Barrens. When Khujand received the death threat from Garot'jin two months ago, Cecilia hadn't thought twice about going with her husband to ensure his safety; she would never leave his side. In retrospect, she should have felt more nervous. Like Irien had warned them, she was going into the heart of Horde territory without any sort of official invitation to hunt down a crazed drug dealer. Like a true warrior of the night, she rode off into the unknown with the man she loved like some sort of power couple living and breathing combat.
But they weren't that kind of couple; they were civilians now. And looking back, it seemed a very necessary but plainly insane effort.
Their foray into Ashenvale was also crazy, though not as much. Her husband was traveling with the endorsement of two neutral organizations, and he had given up his Horde identification card months ago. It was supposed to have been a simple visit to family with the blessing of a natural being who would understand Khujand's desire for forgiveness. If only they had known it would be the more harrowing, life threatening leg of the trip!
Cecilia wrinkled her nose as the waystation came into view, and she hoped she wouldn't have to fly again for a very long time. As much as she valued the hours they had between the waystation and Mor'shan – time to reflect on what they'd left behind and what they were heading for – her thighs were just aching too much. With nobody to observe her, she grinned wide as she remembered just why, exactly, her thighs were sore and how it had nothing to do with the ride itself. As if he understood what sort of naughty things she was thinking of, her husband grinned as well across from her, and for the first time they began they descended to land without him being affected by his fear of heights, which more or less always seemed to transfer over into a fear of flying as well.
The mount handlers had taken their positions to signal the hippogriffs the exact order to land in and the proper places, the intelligent mounts following their instructions flawlessly. Grinning again, Cecilia marveled at the sight before them. Although the waystation wasn't particularly busy that afternoon, there were enough people outside of the lodges for her to see her prediction to Officer Kadrak coming true. Of the three flight point attendees, one was a tauren woman and the two men were an orc and a human speaking some sort of creole of their two languages to each other. Underneath a tree, a draenei shared a long sandwich with a blood elf, the two male warriors looking disheveled and battered but also brotastic as they high fived and laughed over what must have been an adventure equally as amusing as that Cecilia, Khujand and their friends had just been through. True, such sights were still only viewable in strictly neutral points like this waystation or Ratchet, but the world would come around. She had enough experience living in it to know that.
After a soft landing as if to punctuate their transition permanently into civilian life, they all dismounted and unsuccessfully tried to prevent a team of pandaren teamsters not bearing the insignias of any faction from gingerly handling their bags for them and refusing to accept tips.
Forming a triangle, the two night elves and a jungle troll prepared to walk into the main lodge, not realizing that they looked like a corny joke someone would tell at a bar.
Switching from her flying goggles to her usual enormous, gnomish engineered dayvision goggles, Irien was the first to speak. "I'd suggest we spend the night here, but at this point our sleep schedules will be totally messed up," she sighed, her perennial fatigue catching up with her. "And we're better off traveling at night anyway. By the time the raptors are ready it will be near dusk anyway."
Cecilia shook her head in concern. "Irien, you're not ready-"
"You not ready. Not yet," Irien interrupted in the voice she'd use when doing impressions of overbearing night elf parents with heavy accents.
"I'm being serious!" Cecilia chortled along with the other two. "It will take us at least three days of riding from here back home if we take it slow and leisurely."
"That would actually give me more time to rest," Irien said, suddenly talking serious business. "Staying here would give me only a few hours, which wouldn't make a difference. If we just hit the road comfortably, we'll have plenty of time to rest on the way there."
"Ta be honest, tha time we spend waitin' here for tha raptors ta be prepared should be enough," Khujand suggested as he patted Irien on the head like a giant, six and a half foot tall child. "Tha attendees said, what, two hours for bathin' and feedin' them?"
Sighing in defeat, Cecilia nodded. "I guess we'd be more comfortable in our own tent anyway."
"You'll feel better after we sit down, I'm sure," Irien said as she guided the two inside the main congregational lodge despite the fact that she was in worse shape than the both of them.
Inside, the long house had a strange sort of architecture not orcish, nor human, nor elven, nor trollish. It was a sort of combination between tauren architecture and some neauveu style popping up around coffee shops in capitol cities. Most of the other travelers were outside or in the rentable huts, few of them ever lingering for long. Spying the two chairs by the same fireplace they had sat at a month ago, Cecilia nudged Khujand as they trotted across the sheepskin rug to stake out the two large chairs before anyone else did. They sank into them the same way they had the last time they were there, and reveled in the warmth of the large fireplace, just as warm and welcoming as it had been before. Irien pulled up a chair for herself as the two proprietors of the place entered.
The two ageing orcs, a husband and wife who had become legend in the region for always lending help to travelers, were both blindfolded, having lost their sight long ago. Both of them, even the male, were thin and lean by orcish standards, and moved with surprisingly little inhibition despite their great age.
"I thought I heard some familiar footsteps," the old woman said as she smiled upon the trio. "I sense voodoo magic and a very ancient wisdom sitting here, along with a ball of energy not held down by circumstance."
The three friends chuckled lightly at the accuracy of the blind woman's prediction. The old man held his wife's hand gently as though they were newlyweds, and Cecilia felt a warmth swell up in her heart, not caring one bit about the cute elderly couple's race.
"How did you know?" Irien asked, beaming that she'd been described as a ball of energy despite how tired she looked.
"Sometimes, when you stop looking so hard, you can see what you couldn't before," the old woman replied. Her words didn't quite make sense but she said them with such an air of nobility that everyone nodded. She tugged her husband's hand as she spoke. "Do the three of you need anything before getting on your way?"
"Oh…well, is there anything to eat?" Cecilia asked, glancing over at the open kitchen at the other end of the longhouse.
"Our stoves work all hours of the day, save for the cleanings," the old man answered. "What can I help you with?"
"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," Khujand joked. It was the oldest joke in the book but everyone laughed more at the way he said it.
"We actually have a horse here. The whole thing. We can have it prepared for you right now." The old woman was kind, but also completely serious.
Cecilia winced, though Khujand and Irien both licked their lips at the thought. "One horse, please!" Irien chirped.
As they all exchanged a few more jokes before the old blind couple left – never needing assistance despite all the tables and chairs in their way – a sort of comfort settled in to the room. Cecilia stared into the fire. Her husband and her best friend watched as she fell into another series of flashbacks, listening intently to her stories that always seemed to return to her completely at random.
She spoke of watching a fire at a bakery in Suramar when she was already one thousand years old, of watching a campfire with Shandris Feathermoon while on a larger patrol in what would later become Felwood during the Vigil, of burning the camp of a group of arcane practitioners in Azshara shortly after the highborne had already been expelled and roasting quail with uncle Elindir's late wife Rithradia at the abandoned mountain fortress she and Khujand had spied when they first entered Ashenvale – it was only then that she remembered she had been stationed there for several centuries long ago and had simply forgotten when she and Khujand had passed it previously.
Irien had kept her journal with her even when the pandaren carried their bags to a storage awning for luggage, and jotted down as much as she could. Even with the trance like state Cecilia entered, she could still see her husband leaning forward, hanging on her every word in a way that showed her how he truly felt about her more than words could ever say.
Khujand walked away from the stables, having secured everyone's travel bags. The two raptors he and Cecilia had left at the waystation had remained far longer than what they had paid for, but he literally had to force the rest of the money on the handlers – the location truly was a charity, everyone doing their best to help people get back on their feet and on their way. Irien's wind rider from Ratchet was able to carry much of what the two hippogriffs had, and Khujand marveled at how many of their belongings had remained intact despite the great fall both mounts had experienced at the battlefield in southern Ashenvale.
He had had to heal their corpses both before resurrecting them, otherwise they would have just died again. It had been harrowing. During his fall, he had somehow accepted his fate much easier than when Garot'jin had pinned him on that ledge in Durotar during their battle. As long as he lived, Khujand was sure he would never quite know why. He hadn't been able to comfortably accept dying at the drug dealer's hands, and felt a surge of relief when Cecilia saved him at the last minute. But when he and his wife faced certain death at the blades Gwynneth's glaive throwers, a sort of calmness washed over him. Old Sen'jin, may he rest in peace, had once told Khujand as a youth that voodoo would allow the shadow hunters, shadow priests and priestesses and witch doctors a sort of premonition into the future. It could be far, it could be short term and it usually wouldn't be totally under their control until they gave their minds up to the Loa – something Khujand had expressly refused when the offer was implied to him while captive at the drug lab. Whatever it was attributable to, he had the feeling that everything would be okay as he watched Cecilia become a dot in the sky, screaming hysterically as she reached for him.
It was only at the last minute that he thought outside of the box and got the cockamamie idea to cast a horrifying, excruciatingly painful and completely offensive transformation spell on himself, literally becoming a pigeon and landing safely.
"Bah," he said as he searched for Cecilia around the ledge where they had a clear view of Ashenvale across the border.
The inner voice that had apparently been a Loa was noticeably absent. Khujand felt both alone yet comfortable within his own mind. He knew he most likely still had mental problems he wasn't entirely aware of, but then again, practicing voodoo could pretty much only be done by people like that. Plus, having a very caring, patient, understanding life partner certainly helped.
Speaking of which…
"Gettin' one last view?" he asked as he saw his wife standing at the very edge of the waystation camp, gazing over the rolling hills covered by verdant forest.
"One last view on this trip…" she breathed happily, less emotional when viewing her homeland when compared to their initial foray but certainly pleased with the view.
Khujand knew how hard it must have been her at first. Their culture valued family and community, and she knew nothing other than that for a period time he couldn't even imagine. After abandoning it for the outside world she had initially reviled and living through hell for a few years, settling down among other races and traveling to another planet and dimension, she had changed so much – for sure. How could a person like that think of returning at all? She must have felt so cut off. For her sister to beckon her back, even for a visit…it was so hard to imagine. The ten years she'd spent away felt as heavy on her shoulders as the ten thousand she'd spent living there.
Khujand put an arm around Cecilia's shoulder to steady himself, his head reeling just from trying to comprehend it. She truly was – without a shadow of a doubt – the strongest person he ever had and ever would know. And he couldn't be happier than to be with her.
The two of them inhaled the fresh mountain air deeply, gazing at the virgin forest. For as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but green – every inch of the hills and valleys covered by the trees. There certainly must have been rivers and streams, maybe some lakes and glades, but even they were hidden from view by all the leaves. The moon shone above along with the stars in the night sky, bathing the entire landscape in an ethereal light. It was the second most beautiful thing Khujand had ever seen.
Feeling each other simultaneously, husband turned to wife and wife turned to husband. The two of them were alone on the ledge, the Barrens on one side and Ashenvale on the other as they held each other close.
"I know we've been sayin' a lotta sappy stuff lately, but I can't help myself," he started.
"We've earned it," she replied quickly and surely. "When people have stuck together through thick and thin through stuff like this, they get to say whatever they want. It's part of the rules."
They shared a laugh and he didn't hesitate to say what he wanted to say, knowing they would need to get going soon.
"No matter what coulda happened, woulda happened, ya not my second choice. Even if I could go back, safe and sound with Zulwatha and tha two kids I sired with her, I wouldn't. It was a phase in my life, and I'm still gonna love those kids till tha day I die, even if I never see them again, but it's all better this way – for them and especially for me." There was little emotion in his voice this time as he found it easy to contain himself, and he was absolutely sincere in his words. And better yet, he knew she could feel it. "Ya my first choice, Cecilia Hearthglen; I would never want it any other way."
He kissed her knuckles lightly, looking at her look at him the whole time. Sensing it was her turn, Cecilia didn't hesitate either.
"Even if it were raining night elf men from the sky and they were literally throwing wedding bands at people, I wouldn't have chosen them or anybody else. I no longer resent all my life experiences, even the bad ones. Everything I went through – from the War of the Ancients to my own personal torment all drugged out in a gutter – it all made me who I am. And who I am is someone who wants nothing more than to be with this big, overly sensitive man who came from such a different background yet understands me in a way nobody else ever has, not even my mother. You're my first choice, Khujand Hearthglen," she said with emphasis on the surname she was given on a fake ID and which she had given to him.
The moon shone down on two figures at the Ashenvale-Barrens border that evening. Two people with long ears and faintly glowing eyes embraced, pressing their foreheads together as they renewed their bond, a bond that could never be broken. Khujand would never let her go as long as he lived, and he knew Cecilia felt exactly the same. They pulled away to get a better look at each other one last time before going home, their eyes twinkling like the constellations above.
"I love you…so, so much."
"I love ya too."
They turned away from the forest so they could go back out to the plains, the halfway point between what their two respective races called home, their own home resting in the middle. They put their arms around each other as they walked, content and happy as they saw Irien already waiting for them, mounts and bags at the ready.
"We made it."
A/N: if you're tired of the fluff, it occupies a smaller portion of the next chapter. If you can't get more of the fluff, then the next chapter has it in a higher concentration. Either way, it's win-win, and then after next chapter, the epilogue and a great big thank you!
